Baz Luhrmann has ruined it for millions of us. His movie version of Shakespeare's tragedy is so fresh, pacey and sappy, his young lovers so beautiful and florescent, that few stagings of the play live up to the celluloid images. Certainly not this uncharacteristically journeyman production from Dominic Hill.
Like the Globe, Regent's Park Open Air Theatre poses special challenges for a director, not least in the fact that what is happening on stage so often seems incidental to the weather, the Pimms and the strawberries. The Open Air Theatre has been doing event theatre for 70 seasons. There is nothing wrong with it if it is done well, but there is something askew if the pleasure to be had from the evening is in spite of, rather than because of, Shakespeare. That's very much the case here. The evening plods towards its conclusion rather than gallops.
It looks lovely, with Francis O'Connor's design providing a broken mausoleum, full of flower-filled shrines. It may reek more of rural Italy - particularly in the ball scene, played here as a family knees-up - than the city of Verona, but it fits in well with the vaguely 1950s feel of the evening.
Productions of this play are made or broken by the casting of the two lovers. Anyone who can pull them off technically is almost certainly far too geriatric for the roles. Here, of the pair, Alan Westaway's Romeo comes off better. His Romeo is well spoken, intelligent, but lacks fire and charisma. Juliet looks pretty in pink, but Laura Main mistakes the childish for the childlike.
There is only one really electrifying scene: Capulet's furious reaction when his daughter defies him over his plans to marry her off to Paris. In Christopher Godwin's performance you suddenly see the entire family history, the surface bonhomie concealing barely suppressed anger and overspilling violence, the man who sees his daughter merely as a pretty doll, another possession.
There is one other quietly eye-catching performance from Benedict Cumberbatch, whose watchful Benvolio seems to carry the whole weight of the tragedy on his frail shoulders.
· Until September 7. Box office: 020-7486 2431.
